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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

The candidate probably wants a job where their specific skills are needed and where they can leverage said skills for more money.

Imagine as a programmer you have a bunch of specialized skills, have worked at a bunch of FAANGs and the interviewer is just like, "Oh you can program when you can you start and BTW here's $X". The number is probably too low and you'd be pissed at your time being wasted.

Edit - to add to this, dismissing the value of an employee's skills is a deliberate tactic to underpay.

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Getting offended at every low-ball offer seems like a difficult way to live life. It's not like showing anger is going to get you a better offer or better working conditions. That's the point at which you smile, politely decline the offer, and later on reflect on which red flags you missed when you did your research on the company before and during the interview.

I'd prefer people get offended. That company has a decent nonzero chance of raising its future offers.

Your initial offer as a company signals a lot of things aside from the raw value. Even a $10000 improvement in starting point may signal "we won't cheapskate you on:"

- personal computing equipment - infrastructure - benefits - actual use of vacation - training/development - office/cube/chair - functioning HR/support systems - proper staffing

Let's not pretend there is perfect information on companies. All large companies have good and bad teams. I wouldn't bother with Amazon because landing a "good" amazon team lottery ticket attempt is not worth the interviewing time, stack ranking, hostile culture, and "new job vulnerability" etc that Amazon imposes.

It's why the best IT jobs are found via networking, and the best candidates don't really hit the open market.

So HR opening with an insulting offer is very likely ruining a far better hire/fit than an open market negotiation. Typically HR does not distinguish between the two. They should. Of course it can be hard to distinguish between a "good hire" via recommendation and someone building an organization of lackeys, but that is also something HR needs to evaluate, and not simply revert to "cheap offer for everyone".

It is very important to emphasize how vulnerable you are switching jobs. Unless your skillset VERY CLOSELY matches the new job (and that is pretty rare), you won't know their codebase, processes, political/budgeting/power structure, business requirements.

Depending on the company, they'll either have good onboarding and tolerance, or... sink or swim. And people fundamentally don't like helping new hires outside of whatever perverse virtue signalling they want to show to their bosses. Every company's HR and Ticket systems are byzantine and annoying, and helping new hires through that is basically reliving the torturous new hire process for whomever helps them.

A cheap offer also shows that they will pull the plug on your quickly. A good offer is a willing sign of investment. All those common fallacies in human nature with sunk cost / valuing things what they cost you / etc are very very very much things in a human organization.

Having had the opportunity of working in the US.

> people fundamentally don't like helping new hires outside of whatever perverse virtue signalling they want to show to their bosses

This is work culture there but really really that is not the case everywhere

Possibly this is, one of the many, reasons why people are hesitant to get a job on which besides having a shitty pay (on which you can underperform if you [consider] you are "over-skilled") you also have to deal with shitty people

> Getting offended at every low-ball offer seems like a difficult way to live life.

I interpret low-ball offers (and by low-ball I mean rates well below the going market rate) as blatant attempts to abuse and swindle me and a collosal show of bad faith.

Accepting such an offer means being exploited, and being offered one means the exploiter saw in me a valid target for abuse.

I don't know how it's possible to not take it personally. Your income is perhaps the most influential parameter that governs your life.

> It's not like showing anger is going to get you a better offer or better working conditions.

Not accepting abuse does not mean getting angry, at least if you're an adult.

> blatant attempts to abuse

Managers most often don't pay from their own pockets. They are not trying to abuse, exploit, swindle, etc. They are just humans like you and me, trying to do their job. They have job openings, they hire for those, but generally don't have much say in the compensation for those openings. A lot of managers have simply to incentive to underpay. I can't talk about all, the world is too big, and there are probably plenty of exceptions. But the vast majority of managers simply would love to pay their employees as much as they could, only it's really not up to them.

Doesn't matter. The manager doesn't get a pass for following the owner's bullshit. The manager is complicit in the abuse of the employees, doesn't matter they were just 'following orders'.

Whole businesses have shut down over this. An entire burger king quit all at once and posted in on their signage.

I will never eat at another burger king knowing how they treat their workers now.

If more people had ethics and morals other than the 'holy profit' we'd be a much better society.

I, for one, stand with my brothers and sisters in their struggle.

I guess you need to have been through it to have empathy anymore.

No reason to be polite to someone who has wasted your time and tried to take advantage of you.

Thanks for wasting my fucking time, is more polite than they deserve.

There's a difference between an offer that's a little low and when they try to dismiss your experience altogether by pretending it doesn't exist. One is negotiation, the other is simply attempted exploitation.

The employer makes an offer; the candidate accepts, declines, or counters. The employer can certainly offer to underpay but if the candidate rejects it, they won’t succeed at it.

For that matter, negotiating is a thing. They start low, you counter, etc. It’s probably good to take them not allowing negotiations as a point to reflect - is this a symptom of something you want to stay away from or just nature of the industry? (Ie certain industries pay low but compensate elsewhere)

> For that matter, negotiating is a thing. They start low, you counter, etc.

Is it really a good idea to negotiate salary with someone whose starting offer is well below market rate? I mean, even if you feel you can get a change of heart out of them, is that really the character you want in someone who can have a considerable impact on your well being and even life?

I’m a FANG engineer who get emails of that nature literally every day and it doesn’t offend me. People offended by a job offer is ludicrous to me.

That's because you aren't actually looking for employment, being already employed.

I guarantee you- if you are not working, have bills to pay and/or a family to take care of, and you do your part- being prepared, well groomed, informed about the company. You interview, you interview again, then finally with the owner. And after all this time, preparation, endless interviews, $ costs, time costs, etc and they lowball you- you will be offended.

If not, you didn't need the job. Shit, I've been offended over this rigmarole when looking while employed.

Many businesses do it on purpose, making you sink time and money so you feel invested and they hope you will not realize the sunk-cost fallacy.

This is how businesses these days negotiate, and it's disgusting. Much like making speaking about compensation against company policy even though it's illegal.

Companies break laws, exploit us, and we all just bend over and take it.

> Imagine as a programmer you have a bunch of specialized skills, have worked at a bunch of FAANGs and the interviewer is just like, "Oh you can program when you can you start and BTW here's $X". The number is probably too low and you'd be pissed at your time being wasted.

That's not really the same.

What you described is a Michelin Starred chef applying at McDonalds...

Going further, imagine a world - which is not very far behind us - where you work at a software company and someone comes in with their jeans and hoodie and ability to quote the last fastco article headline and gets the job.

It is in fact, frustrating because you are looking to sell your skills, not a hastily put together image. There was time, energy, effort and potentially years of life poured into what you're attempting to present.

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